Is there a memory mapping api on windows platform, just like mmap() on linux?

Question

Is there an api to do memory mapping, just like

mmap()

on linux?

Answer 1

File mapping

File mapping is the association of a file's contents with a portion of the virtual address space of a process. The system creates a file mapping object (also known as a section object) to maintain this association. A file view is the portion of virtual address space that a process uses to access the file's contents. File mapping allows the process to use both random input and output (I/O) and sequential I/O. It also allows the process to work efficiently with a large data file, such as a database, without having to map the whole file into memory. Multiple processes can also use memory-mapped files to share data.

Processes read from and write to the file view using pointers, just as they would with dynamically allocated memory. The use of file mapping improves efficiency because the file resides on disk, but the file view resides in memory. Processes can also manipulate the file view with the VirtualProtect function.

Answer 2

Depends on what exactly you want to use it for. If you want to map existing files into memory, that's supported with memory-mapped files. They can also be used to share memory between processes (use named mapping object with no underlying file). If you want to map physical memory, that's generally not supported from user mode, although there are some tricks.